


Hallucination

by stellations



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 16:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6813118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellations/pseuds/stellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An away mission goes awry, stranding Janeway and Tuvok, who then must rely on each other and good humor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hallucination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnetgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/gifts).



Kathryn tapped her combadge twice to get the team’s attention, managing to hide the motion behind the layers of cloth wrapped around her body. The natives of this planet – people they had yet to actually attempt much contact with, much less find out proper names from – liked to wear light-weight clothes, mostly a lot of cloth wrapped around head, torso, and sometimes legs. The leaders, from what Kathryn’s crew could tell, wore something closer to the saris used by the Hindi people from Earth. They kept their heads wrapped in cloth, as well, but were otherwise much less covered. The away team had chosen to wear the layered cloths, held up with rope belts, so they wouldn’t stand out. 

The last thing they needed was to draw attention. They were here, in what looked like a marketplace, to recover a lost shuttle and rescue their crew, not interfere with this culture.

Two sets of double-taps filtered in. Kathryn frowned. Where was the third?

“Tuvok?” she hissed, daring to make more noise. During their mission preps, the four had each memorized the sound patterns of their team members’ taps. Torres and Paris had clicked in. Where was Tuvok’s answer?

It came thirty long seconds later, three taps with extended pauses in between. The sign that something was very wrong. 

Kathryn swore inwardly. This was not what they needed. Scanning the crowd, she tried to catch sight of Tuvok’s familiar cloth, his face, his stride, _anything_. They hadn’t split up far. Kathryn had only looked away for two seconds. 

“He’s located five meters to your right, Captain,” B’Elanna’s voice whispered breathily from Kathryn’s combadge. 

Knowing that it would be easier for B’Elanna Torres and Tom Paris to hide a tricorder between them, Kathryn was grateful that they had taken the opportunity to search for Tuvok’s location. _Voyager_ could have done it, but not as easily from this distance. The ship was hiding behind a moon to mask its presence. 

Keeping her head down, Kathryn made her way forward, taking the least direct route possible. Kathryn and Tuvok were close to the edge of the market, while the other two were too far out of range, almost at a compound they suspected might have been a prison. That was why they were here in this exact location. That prison had their missing officers. 

“Continue forward,” Kathryn directed as softly as she possibly could. “Be careful. Our priority is getting Commander Chakotay and Ensign Keps back to _Voyager_. We’ll rendezvous there as soon as I find Lieutenant Tuvok.”

One long, drawn out minute passed before she heard Tom, B’Elanna, and the transporter chief each say, “Acknowledged.” 

Her nerves were far from calm, but at least that was one less thing she had to worry about. 

Fingers curled around the cloth by her combadge, Kathryn tried not to look like she was sneaking around. Really, she was just another person—

—watching a pair of familiar dark-skinned hands being marched towards the compound. Kathryn’s eyes widened and then narrowed. She could get to him if she rushed them, but that would blow her cover and his, too. The fleeting thought that he might dress her down in front of the senior staff flashed through her mind, but she shoved it aside before she could smile at the thought. She needed to focus. 

Except her focus was officially shot to hell by the explosion that suddenly rocked the compound. Everything seemed to slow down… freeze… and then time sped up so fast that Kathryn wasn’t sure she could keep up. Tuvok fell, his captors pushed forward, and suddenly someone was shoving something into her hands. 

“You’re with us, aren’t you?” a man whispered, his lips pressed almost against her ear. “The outsiders?”

Throwing caution to the wind, Kathryn nodded. “Yes.” Maybe she could get some information or help from him if she agreed.

“Take these and get out. They’ll turn you invisible.”

Then he was gone, almost like he really had disappeared, with the only signs of his visit to her being the two large black bracelet items in her hands. She quickly hid them in the folds of her clothes. Now was not the time to decide if she wanted to take a chance on trusting whoever that mystery man was. 

Invisible. _Right_.

Something was happening near the compound. Kathryn didn’t smell anything, none of her officers had given her the amber signal, and _Voyager_ wasn’t contacting them. That last one could be due to anything at this point. Interference, with their luck.

“Janeway to _Voyager_ ,” she hissed.

Nothing.

There were too many people. Chaos. So she decided to take that chance and she activated one of the bracelets. Immediately, her body disappeared from view. Except it wasn’t really disappearing. When she lifted an arm, Kathryn could see an outline, a blurry shape that was more or less transparent, but difficult to see. Like the eyes naturally wanted to slide away and ignore it. 

If she got a chance to keep these things afterwards, she was going to have B’Elanna strip one of them down. 

A cough nearby caught her attention. _Tuvok_. Somehow, adrenaline served her well. Kathryn found Tuvok, clasping the other bracelet around his wrist and activating it. Tuvok disappeared from sight. Keeping a hold on him, Kathryn roughly pulled him up, still not daring to speak – apparently, neither was he – and began to hurry off as quickly as she could. With one of his arms draped around her shoulders and her hands holding him in place by one hand and the rope belt around his waist, she somehow managed to get them away from the chaos and into the desert. There wasn’t much shade or anywhere to hide for several kilometers, but once they were far enough away from the marketplace, Kathryn knew they would not be bothered or followed. 

Ten minutes into the desert, Kathryn heard a double tap on her combadge, followed by a soft whisper from B’Elanna. “We got them, Captain. Commander Chakotay and Ensign Keps are aboard _Voyager_. What’s your position?”

She answered with a quick triple tap. _No can do, B’Elanna,_ she thought.

“Lieutenant Tuvok?”

Double tap in the affirmative. 

Tuvok slid off her shoulder at that point. Kathryn just barely had enough time to catch him before he hit the ground. Both of their bracelets slid off, causing the active camouflage field to deactivate. Letting Tuvok rest against a large rock face nearby, Kathryn decided to join him, using it as shelter for the moment. Breathing heavily, she finally tried to talk into the combadge. 

Nothing. Just her luck.

“Captain…”

Tuvok’s voice surprised her, bringing her back to her oldest and dearest friend. Turning, she knelt down next to him, her bright eyes full of worry. Somehow he had gotten injured. Later, she would ask how. Right now, she just needed to make sure he wasn’t dying on her. 

“You should leave me here.”

Worry built up inside Kathryn and she found anger taking its place, as usual. “No. No, Tuvok. I’m not leaving you—”

“You must. My injuries are grave. It would be illogical to remain.”

“To hell with logic!” Kathryn snapped, her face momentarily twisted before she could force it back to the more or less hardened evenness she always wore. As she leaned slightly closer, her voice dropped to that low, almost husky sound that said she would brook no arguments. “I am not leaving you, Tuvok. I swore to this entire crew that I would get everyone home and I will. We are making it back, do you hear me?”

“We will be returning to Earth. My home is on Vulcan,” Tuvok pointed out unnecessarily, in what Kathryn just _knew_ was his way of being difficult and arguing her point. She rolled her eyes.

“And our Andorian crew members are from Andoria and the Bolians are from Bolarus IX and Chakotay is from a small planet in the Demilitarized Zone—”

She could hear Tuvok _“helpfully”_ mutter the actual name, but she ignored him. 

“—and so on. I understand. But that isn’t the point. The point is that you are coming with me, Lieutenant. That’s an order.”

Tuvok paused for a short moment, one eyebrow raised in what Kathryn had come to recognize as his “that is illogical” face. She also knew that it meant he would not protest. “Yes, Captain.”

Good. “Now that that’s settled…” She pulled her tricorder from a pocket inside her clothes and let it scan him. While it wasn’t a medical tricorder, it would have to do. 

Or it would if she could get a good scan. 

“There must be something blocking the sensors. I was having a hard time contacting _Voyager_ earlier.” None of this made her feel any better and Tuvok’s silence wasn’t helping. “We need to move. The farther we get from the market, the better. We might have better luck if we put some distance between it and us.”

“You will need to sleep soon,” Tuvok pointed out, again unnecessarily. 

Kathryn huffed in response. She’d gone on less sleep plenty of times. Granted, she didn’t have any equivalent of coffee right now, but she’d manage. 

The idea of a nice cup of coffee made her groan with longing.

“The sand will provide a good mattress and pillow,” Tuvok continued, obviously misinterpreting her groan to be a response to his comment about sleep.

She waved his concern away, still imagining that cup of coffee. “Do you remember that last time we were on a desert planet?” she asked, hoping for something of a distraction for them both. “Something about the water had hallucinogenic properties. We brought back Ensign Carren and the Doctor said this was the first patient he’d seen who was high from ingesting water.”

The joke wouldn’t make Tuvok laugh the same way it made Kathryn laugh, but part of her suspected that he appreciated the change of subject all the same.

Taking the time to peer up over the rock face to make sure no one had followed them, she finally settled in to see to her friend. She ended up having to bandage him in a few places and hope they all would hold out. He seemed to be doing better at least, less like his body would give out at any second. That gave her a little room to take her tricorder out and scan the area. If there were something to eat or drink out here, better shelter from whatever might be around, they would do much better.

“There’s an oasis about a kilometer east,” she commented, nodding her head forward, away from the rocks they were hiding behind. At least the damnable thing worked well enough to give her directions. “We might be able to find better shelter nearby.”

Tuvok seemed less inclined to protest this time around. “As you wish, Captain,” was his only response, which she took to be his acceptance. Sliding his arm around her and one of hers around him, she helped him back up and the two of them moved onward. He had always been one of her best friends, probably _the_ best friend Kathryn had ever had, and she would be damned if anything happened to him now. She wasn’t leaving him and she would do anything she could to help him. 

It was, after all, her fault that he was injured in the first place. If she hadn’t made the call to destroy the Caretaker’s array all those years ago, Tuvok would be at home, on Vulcan, and with his family. He wouldn’t be leaning so heavily on her because he could barely walk. Guilt ate at her like a hungry targ. 

Tuvok said nothing else until Kathryn had deposited him rather unceremoniously to the ground underneath a large tree that looked somewhat similar to an Acacia variant from Earth. Kathryn squinted at the tree through the growing twilight, as though its branches held the key to all of her problems. Either that or this tree was the _cause_ of her problems. 

“You should not blame yourself, Captain.” 

His voice was even, as always, full of logic she usually paid a great deal of attention to. Right now, his tone only served to annoy her further. She squinted into the branches of the trees.

“It’s my fault you’re hurt, Tuvok,” she pointed out, her tone hard in response. He knew she was avoiding the real issue and she was well aware of that fact. 

“You did not cause this.”

“I as good as did,” she snapped in response. “My actions five years ago determined this. If I had just taken us home and destroyed the array from afar—”

“Then you would not be the Kathryn Janeway I have come to admire.”

 _That_ jolted her out of her thoughts about the movement in the Acacia branches above them. Her gaze ripped from the tree and returned to her friend, her brow creasing into a frown.

“I may not always understand your…” Tuvok paused, eyebrows rising slightly as he searched for the right words to explain. “… _human_ and illogical reasoning. However, I do understand that you care about the lives of others, your crew and everyone you meet. If you had sacrificed the Ocampa, your guilt would have been far worse. I am uncertain I could have followed you had that been the case.”

This was, perhaps, the most plainly anyone had spoken to her about that incident since the entire senior staff had mutinied against her over her guilt. Her mind traveled back to that moment, back to everything else that had happened before and since, and she sighed wearily, like the weight of the galaxy weighed heavily on her. In some respects, it did. This quadrant seemed to weigh her. It had changed her and everyone could see that.

Deciding that she didn’t really want to address something that would bring up _emotions_ in her the way Tuvok’s praise always did – he never praised lightly and it always meant more when he gave it than when anyone else did, especially after their horrendous meeting, something she had chosen to use as a learning experience – Kathryn scooted towards the small pool of water. Her tricorder gave her nothing helpful, a discovery that made her huff with annoyance. Dipping her hands into the water, she brought it up to smell it.

“Be careful, Captain,” Tuvok warned. “It might have hallucinogenic properties.”

Kathryn couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing. A long time had passed since she had laughed so freely or warmly. In fact, she couldn’t even remember the last time she had. She knew Tuvok hadn’t meant it as a joke in the same way that a human would have, but at the same time, Tuvok knew her. He knew she would need what he would call a “human joke” and it meant all the more to her that he had done this for her peace of mind. 

“I should give you a promotion for your wisdom,” she eventually managed to say, after she had stopped choking on her laughter. 

Tuvok’s second response of, “As you wish, Captain,” only made her grin and shake her head. Of all the people she could be stranded out here with, she was dearly glad it was Tuvok. 

“If I did drink this water,” she began, clearly teasing him as a human would, though she knew he would at least recognize what she was doing, “would you dress me down in front of the senior staff?”

Tuvok’s eyebrows rose in consideration. “The thought did occur to me. However, I believe my time would be better spent in meditation for your health.”

She snorted with amusement, though she had no doubt that he would be meditating for a while after they got back to _Voyager_.

“You should join me, Captain. Meditation is a calming technique that would do you good.”

Kathryn’s eyebrows shot upwards. “You want me to spend four hours doing nothing in a room with you?” she asked, as though this were the strangest thing she had ever heard and would never be caught dead doing it. A second passed and then her expression softened, lips taking on a gentle smile she rarely gave these days, her tone echoing the fondness to her features. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Tuvok’s expression changed minutely – only someone who was well-versed in Vulcans would recognize it – but Kathryn could tell that he appreciated her sentiment. 

“Come on, Tuvok. You need to drink this more than I do.”

It took her some time to get him situated, but eventually, he managed to drink using a large leaf from a nearby plant. Nothing seemed to go wrong and Kathryn was quick to point out that it didn’t make either of them hallucinate. It did seem to have some sort of rejuvenation quality, which Kathryn took to be a good thing. Tuvok no longer looked like a targ’s plaything and Kathryn decided she would take that as a win. For now, at least. 

Sighing heavily, she resettled them both back against the tree. At least they had water. Both of them could survive for a while with nothing but water. Kathryn leaned her head back against the tree, staring up through the branches to the stars that were peeking through. Eventually, her eyes slid shut and she let her mind wander. She could just picture Chakotay’s relieved look when they got back, B’Elanna’s excitement at being handed her new toy bracelets, the Doctor’s worried irritation at the two of them. In fact, she could almost hear—

“Captain?”

Kathryn started, eyes sliding open. “Hm?”

“Captain Janeway?”

Was that?

“The Captain is safe with me, Ensign,” Tuvok’s voice rang out. 

“Good. We’ve got a lock on you and as soon as the interference—”

Kathryn sighed again. She was really getting tired of being cut off at every pass. This planet wasn’t good for her health. Or Tuvok’s. 

Luckily, whatever was blocking tansporters and comm signals dissipated enough that five minutes later Kathryn found herself opening her eyes to one of the transporter rooms. Relief soared through her for a second before she turned to Tuvok, helping get him back upright. Someone else tried to help her, but she waved them off, ordering them to do something else. Tuvok’s injury was her fault and she would get him to sickbay if it was the last thing she did. Pausing with his arm around her shoulders once again, she fished out the bracelets, removing one from her wrist and one from Tuvok’s. Passing them to Tom Paris, she offered a grin of amusement.

“Make sure B’Elanna gets these. She’ll want to take a look at them.”

Kathryn took a few steps out into the corridor with Tuvok before she paused, glanced back over her shoulder, and added, “But tell her to be careful. They’re a pretty powerful hallucinogenic.”

The look on Paris’ face was worth everything and Kathryn managed a grin as she and Tuvok headed off for sickbay. She made a note to check on B’Elanna as soon as she could escape sickbay. Seeing the look on her chief engineer’s face when she cracked the secrets of those active-camouflage bracelets would be worth it.

“That was not entirely accurate, Captain,” Tuvok spoke as they entered the turbo lift.

Kathryn chuckled. “Sure it was, Lieutenant. I’m almost certain I hallucinated turning invisible.”

Whether he wanted to argue the point or not, Tuvok chose to remain silent. Thus Kathryn was left with the thoughts swirling around in her mind, not the least of which was the idea of just how grateful she was to have Tuvok as her friend.


End file.
